I have a confession to make. Cast iron pots and pans intimidate me. I bought one a couple of years ago to try what was suppose to be the best way to cook a steak in the world. Well, I smoked my whole house up and burned the outside, leaving the inside still mooing. I never used it again and it just sat there rusting away. Well now I’m trying a new recipe and it calls for a cast iron skillet. Okay, gotta get back on the horse.

When I cleaned out the garage I found that skillet and my husband’s grandmother’s cast iron lidded chicken fryer. They were not pretty. They were just covered in nasty rusty yuckiness. I didn’t know what to do. I had tried to clean my skillet once by some weird way where you put it in a garbage bag with cleaners. Did not work. At. All.

I was willing to give it one more shot. I found this pin on pinterest.

https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/survival/2013/2493846.html

Okay, first of all, I need to let you know that it’s easy, but has some drawbacks. You just scrub up your pots with a brush to get as much rust off as you can.

Then you put them on the lowest rack in your oven upside down. Now for the drawback. You use the self clean mode and just let those suckers cook. It will smell. Like your house is on fire. It also takes a little over 4 hours.

Next just let them cool for about an hour because they will be VERY hot. Now you wash them off again with a metal brush or scrubber. Make sure you get in all the crevices.

After you scrub all the rust off, you grease it down really good. I used vegetable shortening. Put them back in the oven upside down. Put one rack on the very bottom and line it with foil. I would make a lip all the way around with the foil because the grease dripped off and now I have a grease stain in my previously clean oven.

Bake in a 350 oven for an hour. Let cool for about an hour then pull them out and grease the insides one more time.

That’s it. I was floored, shocked, knock me over with a feather surprised by how they turned out.

Y’all, look at this skillet!!!!! It looks brand spanking new!

Like I said before, this was my husband’s grandmother’s. She will be 101 this year. We googled the brand. It’s Griswold and they ceased production in the mid 1950’s. This skillet is probably about 60 years old!!! It looks like we just bought it. I couldn’t be more pleased.

So, if you have cast iron that you don’t know what to do with because it’s a rusty mess, you have got to try this method. Seriously.

I’m also giving a shout out to The Carbonaro Effect. I watched it this morning and it had me laughing so hard. Nothing better than a really good magician with a sense of humor.

Stacy